


Short Notice

by story_monger



Series: Short Notice [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Human Castiel, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Men of Letters Bunker, Protective Dean Winchester, Shrinking, Team Free Will, Tiny!Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-11
Updated: 2014-05-11
Packaged: 2018-01-24 09:09:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1599425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/story_monger/pseuds/story_monger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the witch and Dorothy incident, it should have been pretty clearly spelled out for everyone: don’t mess with artifacts in the bunker.<br/>And for the record, Sam hadn’t <i>messed</i> with anything. It had been an <i>accident</i>.<br/>Which, granted, didn’t make his situation any better. But it was the principle of the matter.</p><p>In which Sam gets shrunk, Dean panics, Castiel handles Winchesters, and Kevin saves the day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Short Notice

**Author's Note:**

> This happens in that season nine AU where Cas stays human and joins Dean, Sam, and Kevin in the bunker

After the witch and Dorothy incident, it should have been pretty clearly spelled out for everyone: don’t mess with artifacts in the bunker.

And for the record, Sam hadn’t _messed_ with anything. It had been an _accident_.

Which, granted, didn’t make his situation any better. But it was the principle of the matter.

So. Said accident occurred on a rainy Tuesday morning. With nothing in the way of hunts, Sam had a mind to hike down to the artifact repository, sift through it and see what exactly they had on hand. It might turn up something useful, he’d told Dean, Kevin and Cas over breakfast.

“Hey, yeah, you do that,” Dean had said vaguely, waving a hand and keeping his eye trained on the laptop. “Can’t hurt.”

And that had been the end of the topic.

An hour later, Sam found himself in one of a handful of rooms stuffed with shelves and drawers containing artifacts of varying purpose and origin. The Men of Letters had kept meticulous records of each item (because lord only knew that if nothing else, the Men of Letters knew how to keep records) and Sam lost himself in reading cream-colored cardstock covered in the beautiful, looping twentieth century handwriting that he recognized from countless census records.

Forty-five minutes into his excursion, Sam was craning his neck to peer at a dusty jar sitting on a top shelf. Its label was turned away, so Sam reached up to rotate it into view. His hand met something grainy, and a second later he felt a thick crack in the jar’s bottom.

Sam pulled his hand away and looked down to find his fingers dusted in a pale blue powder.

“Damn,” he muttered, and brushed his hand across his clothes. He just hoped it was something innocuous and not—

Sam’s bones seized.

The pain came out of nowhere, and caused Sam to physically stumble backwards. He slammed against a shelf and heard things wobble dangerously, but he wasn’t paying as much attention to that as to the sensation of a giant hand pressing down on him from all sides. It was like he sat at the bottom of the deep end of the swimming pool, only much, much worse. Maybe at the bottom of the Mariana Trench itself because he didn’t think anyone should be able to survive this much pressure, inside and out, from every direction.

Sam must have blanked out briefly, because when he became aware of himself again he was falling. His stomach swooped with nausea and it felt like all the air in his body was being squeezed out of him in one, steady stream.

A jarring halt, a final blinding squeeze, and then silence.

Sam assumed he was dead for a solid few seconds, because people just didn’t _survive_ Mariana Trench pressure and falling from some great, unknowable height.

But no, his body ached all over and his breath came in fast, short spurts, and last Sam checked, those things only happened to people who had bodies with functioning nervous systems.

Sam cracked open one eye and stared at a wide plain of gray stone. Something, perhaps a wall, rose in the near distance. Sam shifted, then groaned when his muscles, his bones, hell, his very organs protested the idea. He ground his eyes shut again and let himself drift through the pain in a dream-like haze.

He only opened his eyes again when the nausea retreated to a distant roar.

The wall was still there, as was the plain. The light had an odd hue to it; downright sickly looking.

Maybe the powder transported people, Sam considered. Perhaps it had dumped him in a completely alien world and left him here to rot.

Sam slowly eased himself onto his elbows, craned his neck and squinted at a long line of brilliant suns. The walls towered over him with proportions simply not possible on Earth. He couldn’t even see where they disappeared into a murky sky.

As he lay there, staring up, Sam…was not panicking. Not yet.

He hauled himself to a sit and looked at his surroundings again. And then he paused.

Because the giant walls had giant shelves. And the shelves contained large objects. And the objects were extremely familiar.

Sam tilted his head back up. Not suns. Light bulbs. And not a sky, but a ceiling.

He was still in the bunker.

The relief that coursed through Sam was enough to make the second revelation almost manageable. He’d not been transported anywhere. If he wasn’t mistaken he’d been shrunk. Which was…not ideal, granted, but it felt manageable.

With a few hitched breaths, Sam maneuvered himself into a stand and examined his body. He was still himself, he found. His body looked perfectly recognizable. His clothes had even been shrunk along with him, and that in and of itself was a massive relief. And when he peered into his pockets, he even found a miniature cell phone, wallet, and scraps of paper, though the cellphone proved to be useless.

“Ok,” Sam muttered to himself, stuffing the items back into his pocket. He looked down the long aisle. The door stood somewhere down there, and then the corridor, and then the stairs. Sam wiped a hand across his mouth. This was going to take a while.

***

Sam guessed that it took a solid hour of walking to reach the stairs. He had to pause every so often for a breather, because his body still thrummed with a low-level pain from the shrinking. Whenever he did that, he looked around at the cold, high ceiling and marveled at how alien it all was. The reality of the situation probably hadn’t sunk in yet; the only emotion Sam could muster about the whole thing was a constant buzz of giddiness.

The stairs were close, only about a soccer field’s length away, when there was a burst of movement ahead of him. Sam only had a few seconds to jerk away when a massive cockroach scuttled past him. It was _huge,_ the size of a mastiff at least. But it also paid Sam no heed, and soon its scuttles had faded to distant rustles. Still, Sam stood rooted to the spot for a solid minute after the cockroach had disappeared. His heart _thwapped_ against his rib cage and he had to remind himself, firmly, that cockroaches were omnivorous scavengers and not predators.

That would be spiders.

Of which there were many, in the bunker.

Sam crossed his arms suddenly. Partially from a draft that snaked across the floor, partially from the thought that he was probably too big for a spider to consider prey but then again, maybe not.

He needed a weapon. But he knew that nothing would offer itself down here, that the stairs provided his best shot at finding help. So he began walking again, though this time throwing glances over his shoulder every so often.

If Sam had to guess, he’d shrunk to something in the range of four to five inches. Small, but not vanishingly so. Tall enough to be able to take a leap and catch the top edge of the first stair step. It wasn’t so hard, similar enough to scaling a wall. Once Sam got his leg slung on top, he scrambled onto the step easily enough. After a few seconds to catch his breath, Sam tackled the second step. And the third. The fourth time, he scraped up the tips of his fingers finding purchase, and let himself rest after that.

He made it through two more steps before, on the seventh step, he lost his grip and clattered down with a muffled “oomph!” Suppressing a low groan, Sam pushed himself to a sit and rubbed at the back of his head; he could feel it starting to swell already.

“Real great Sam,” he muttered as he winced to a stand again. “What you get for being a—oh god.”

His ankle sent a sharp pain up his leg. Sam partially collapsed against the step wall and let loose a string of curse words.

His lips rolled in, gaze fixed on the ceiling, Sam wondered if it wouldn’t be better to curl up where he was and wait for someone to find him.

But no, he decided a moment later. He might fall asleep or pass out, and he might end up stepped on or found by an unsavory household creature. And besides, it was still morning. No one would think to come find him for hours at least.

So Sam let the throbbing retreat slightly before he eased away from the stair wall. He loosely lifted his head to assess the stair, then jumped up with a grunt and caught the edge. His ankle exploded with fresh pain, but Sam shoved it into a far corner of his mind and focused on hauling himself into the flat surface.

He lay there for a minute, then tottered to a stand and did it again.

It was all a bit of a blur after that.

When Sam belatedly realized that he had a door in front if him and not another stair, he nearly shouted with joy. His ankle and head pounded, and now he had a fresh collection of bruises and scrapes, because it turned out that concrete steps weren’t forgiving things. His muscles ached, his mouth was dry, and he was so far beyond done with this whole thing that it wasn’t even funny.

The door was ajar, thank god, and Sam emerged at the far end of a hallway. The rooms here mainly held archives; the bedrooms lay past the main living area. Surely, Sam thought as he began limping down the hall, someone would be in the kitchen or at the big tables. Surely they’d catch sight of him before stepping on him. Then again, the way his luck was going, maybe not.

As Sam neared the living area, he caught muffled voices. He almost thought he was hearing thunder at first, the sounds were so deep and rolling. But then again, thunder did not say things like “goddamn” or “really hot” because those were definite phrases that Sam caught.

When Sam emerged blinking into the main living area, it took him a few seconds to locate everything. The already oversized room had blown into almost science fiction worthy proportions.

The table where Kevin and Dean were sitting initially looked like a ceiling supported by pillars. Kevin had his head propped up on one hand and was half grinning at Dean, who had his feet up on the table.

“Scarlett Johansson?” Dean was saying. “Seriously, Kevin, why are you asking that? What human with any ounce of sex drive wouldn’t say yes to her?”

Sam stumbled forward and had to lick his lips before he croaked out, “Hey!”

“Yeah, and I’m saying the same about Keira Knightley,” Kevin gestured.

“Dean! Kevin!”

“I wasn’t saying that she’s not hot,” Dean leaned his head back in exasperation. “But she’s _not_ at the same level as Scarlett.”

“Dean! DEAN. DEAN I’M DOWN HERE!”

“You’re so full of shit,” Kevin straightened before going to a stand. He grabbed an empty glass and headed to the kitchen.

“Oh yeah, _I’m_ full of shit, mister I-wouldn’t-say-no-to-Ryan-Reynolds.”

“And you would?”

“Not the point.”

Sam slowed as he neared Dean’s chair. His brother had his head directed toward the kitchen, so he didn’t see Sam waving his arms. And he was still running that big mouth of his, so he didn’t hear Sam’s swiftly fading shouts of “Dean! _Dean_! Dean just fucking look at me! Dean!”

His teeth gritted against his body, Sam limped beneath the table until he was right near Dean’s feet.

Which, in hindsight, was a monumentally stupid thing to do.

Because when Dean suddenly stood and started ambling toward the kitchen, his boot came swinging forward. And while Sam was damn lucky not to be stepped on, he also got solidly clipped by the boot and sent flying to the side.

Stars exploded across Sam’s vision. He became aware, only in the most distant sense, that he’d smacked against a floorboard and was in a crumpled pile and everything hurt, _everything_ , and Dean was talking in that rumbling, booming voice that made Sam wince and god fucking damn it what higher power had he pissed off lately that decided that he needed _this_?

“Sam?”

Sam stirred, then hissed, but he still creaked himself to a sit (how many times was he going to do this today?)

“What about Sam?”

The floor was shaking suddenly, and all of Sam’s instincts ordered him to get himself out of view, out of harm’s way, find somewhere to just sit and think and stop hurting and then maybe freak out.

“That looks like—fucking _shit_.”

The thudding and the voices were even louder, and a shot of pure adrenaline got Sam to stand and stumble toward a cabinet pressed against the wall. He had just enough space between the floor and the cabinet’s bottom to slip into a place that was dusty and dark, but blessedly sheltered.

“SAM?”

Sam did a full-body flinch and collapsed into a crouch. His hands pressed against his ears but he could still hear the voices because they rattled his very bones.

“What d’you mean Sam? He’s—“

“Sammy? Holy shit, is that you? Sam?”

“He was downstairs—“

“Yeah and now he’s—fucking hell, get me a flashlight. Sam?”

“STOP YELLING!” Sam bellowed. “STOP.”

Then a clearing of a throat, followed by a rumbling “Sam?” that, finally, better resembled a raised voice than a jet taking off. Sam exhaled, then dropped his hands from his ears. He looked over and found a green eye as big as his head.

“Sammy?” Dean repeated.

“Yeah,” Sam rasped, then cleared his throat. “Yeah, it’s me.”

The eye shut briefly. Sam heard Dean mutter something.

“Did I just kick you?” Dean asked.

“Yes.”

“Oh god.”

“Dean…” Sam’s voice faltered away. He was still crouched and his body still hurt and he was still cold and Dean. Dean was so large that it made Sam’s stomach churn.

“Did I hurt you?” Dean asked.

“What?”

“When I kicked you. How bad was it?”

“I don’t know,” Sam admitted. He looked down. “I’m not bleeding externally. Bones might be broken I dunno. I don’t…” Sam heaved an inhale. “I don’t…Dean….I….”

“Hey,” Dean muttered. “Hey, Sam, don’t pass out on me, okay? Not a good idea, dude.”

“Got the flashlight,” Kevin’s voice roared, followed by a loud “shhh!” from Dean.

“What?” Kevin whispered.

“We’ve got a shrunken Sam, keep it down, okay? I think he’s going into shock.”

“Shrunken—“ Kevin flopped to the floor and Sam watched him press his eye to the space between floor and cabinet. A blinding floodlight smacked Sam in the face.

“Off!” he ordered, screwing his eyes up. “Kevin, turn it off.”

The light clicked and the space dove back into dimness. Kevin was silent for several seconds before he said, “Shit.”

“Shit’s right,” Dean muttered before readjusting his position and squinting at Sam again. “Sam? You still with us?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. That’s great. That’s real good. Can you give me a rating?” Sam swallowed and flipped through his past injuries.

“Eight,” he finally said. Then, “Point five.”

“Is that bad?” Kevin whispered.

“Ten is dead,” Dean muttered.

Sam shivered suddenly; more like a spasm.

“Can you walk?” Dean asked.

“I think so.”

“Can you come out here?”

Sam lifted his head and met Dean’s one huge eye.

That boot had been enormous. Dean would practically be a skyscraper. Everything in Sam faltered. He couldn’t even shake his head; he just stared at Dean and finally felt himself catch up to the implications of being five inches tall.

He must have stayed silent for too long, because he heard Dean say, “Kevin, go find Cas, will you?”

“How’s Cas gonna help?”

“Just…go find him.”

Kevin hauled himself away from the cabinet, and Sam listened to his receding footsteps. Dean shifted on the floor.

“Sam?”

“Still here,” Sam managed.

“So you can’t come out?”

“You kicked me.” Sam’s voice sounded childish in its thinness. Dean inhaled.

“I was…Sam, I had no idea you were there.”

“Yeah, and you still kicked me,” Sam insisted. His heart rate was picking up again. “You could have stepped on me.”

Dean’s eye squeezed shut.

“Sam don’t—“

“You could have!” Sam’s voice came out wild. “I can’t…it’s too _big_.”

Several heavy seconds of silence passed.

“Okay,” Dean exhaled. “Fair enough. Listen. I’m going to let you freak out. You deserve that much. But eventually you need to come out. We need to make sure you didn’t break anything too bad, and then you need to tell us what happened so we can get you right. Okay?”

Sam’s shoulders slumped.

“Sam?”

“Okay,” he said.

“Can I stay here?” Dean asked.

“Yeah.”

“Cool.”

Sam tilted his head up and concentrated on moving air through his lungs. Five counts in, five counts out. Ignore the washes of pain, just focus on breathing and getting his mind out of that tight, panicked funk.

At some point, Sam heard footsteps again, and low mutters that definitely belonged to Cas. No one tried to talk to him though, and Sam appreciated that.

 _I’m going to go out there_ , he told himself. _I’m going to let them help me. And I’ll be myself…within a few days._

When Sam lowered his head, Dean was still in the same position. His eyes were half-lidded.

After allowing himself a steadying breath, Sam hauled himself to a stand one last time.

“I’m coming out,” he called. Dean’s face pulled away from the crack. Sam limped gamely toward the strip of yellow light, his fists clenched and his body still complaining.

Three faces hung over him like bizarre moons when Sam emerged, blinking, in the light. Sam gaped up at them and very nearly turned right back around.

“You’re covered in dust,” Dean finally said. He looked far too pale.

“Um,” Sam glanced down. “Yeah I—“ his ankle nearly gave way. “I need a med kit.”

A hand approached him. It was a damn big hand; comparable to a stage platform. When Sam glanced up, he found that it was attached to Dean.

Sam shuffled gamely forward, felt something inside him give way, and he nearly toppled into the hand. It was warm and didn’t smell that great, but it was also solid and took Sam’s weight easily.

“We need to get him to a table,” Castiel said.

“Sam?” Dean asked. “You hear that?”

“Mm.” Sam scooted forward and hauled himself the rest of the way onto Dean’s hand. It immediately bowled around him, and a second hand came up like a wall. Sam’s fingers dug into Dean’s skin as Dean lifted the hand, then went to a stand. The vertigo crashed over Sam as Dean walked them to the table.

“We okay?” Dean asked.

“Nope,” Sam closed his eyes. “Nope. Nope.”

“Yeah, okay, you’re here.” When Sam opened his eyes, he found a vast brown tabletop and their battered med kit. He all but toppled out of Dean’s hand. He twisted his head up and found Castiel and Dean above him, Kevin seating himself across the table.

“Hi Cas,” Sam managed.

“You don’t look well at all,” Castiel said. His brow was furrowed.

“Yeah, well…” Sam shrugged. Castiel seated himself in front of Sam and brought his face closer.

“What’s injured?” he asked.

“Um. Head. Ankle’s twisted I think. Ribs hurt; might be broken. Couple of bruises.”

“May I?” Castiel’s hand neared.

Something in Sam instinctively seized up even as he forced himself to nod. But really, the man was a former angel, so Sam shouldn’t have been so surprised when Castiel felt at his ribs with such precise pressure, or when his huge thumb tilted Sam’s head up so Castiel could check the sizes of his pupils.

Bandaging took some time, but Castiel got Sam’s ankle immobilized and bound his torso just to be safe. At some point Kevin appeared with a bottle cap full of water, which Sam gulped at like a dying man.

So in the end, despite the persistent hugeness of everything, Sam felt marginally all right. Didn’t mean that his headache had gone away, or that his heart wasn’t still pounding too hard, or that his muscles didn’t burn.

“I need to lie down,” he croaked.

“I know, but what if there’s a time limit?” Dean asked, and his slightly louder voice made Sam wince again. “D’you know what shrunk you?”

“Um. Blue powder. In room 3A. Row 5 in the very back.” Sam buried his head in his hands. “The jar was broken and I got some one my hands. I don’t know what it is.”

“That’s fine,” Dean assured him. “We’ll go down there and check it out. We’ll wear gloves.”

Sam snorted weakly.

“Be pretty dumb if two people got shrunk today,” he managed.

“Yeah. Pretty dumb.”

Things were getting fuzzier, and Sam decided that the last few hours were finally catching up to him.

“’m gonna…gonna pass out,” he mumbled.

“Here.” A hand—Sam guessed Castiel’s but he couldn’t be sure—appeared in his vision. It edged its way beneath Sam, and Sam allowed himself to be scooped up and cradled in a small valley of skin and muscle. He could hear Castiel rumbling around him, Dean nearby, Kevin a little ways away, and he wanted to know what they were saying but everything was becoming soft and static and the pain was still too close but it was also increasingly manageable, because it was being eaten up by a thick darkness.

***

Sam first became aware of a steady gust; like something on an especially windy day.

He listened to it for a few minutes before he peeled his eyes open.

He lay on what looked and felt like a worn, folded dishtowel, with a scrap of fabric—flannel, probably torn from someone’s old shirt—acting as a blanket. Sam’s makeshift mattress had been perched on a bedside table, and on the bed sat Castiel.

He had a book in his lap and a notebook at his side. A pencil poked out from behind his ear, and he fiddled with it occasionally as he turned thick pages that clattered like sheets of metal. Sam curled up slightly under his blanket and, with his eyes still half-lidded, watched Castiel read.

Castiel had muttered to himself several times and jotted down a few notes by the time he finally glanced over. He met Sam’s eye and sat up straighter.

“Sam,” he said in a near whisper.

“Hey.”

Castiel leaned forward, so that his face hung a stone’s throw from Sam.

“How are you feeling?”

“Better,” Sam said. His throat was dry. “What time is it?”

“Nearing three in the afternoon.” Castiel said. “We’re researching.”

“What—oh, for me?” Sam slowly propped himself up on his elbows. “Did you find out what the powder was?”

“A little,” Castiel told him. “The records said it was confiscated from witches in 1895.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Damn.”

“Kevin and Dean are culling the archives to see if they can find any mention of the spell,” Castiel lifted the book briefly. “I have a reading list.”

“I should help them,” Sam said without any enthusiasm. “I know my way around the archives. Kevin’s been more focused on the tablet and Dean—“

“Sam,” Castiel interrupted. “You need to rest.”

“But—“

“Sam.”

Sam sighed and lowered himself again. He curled up in an even tighter ball and buried his nose in the blanket. It felt thick, like canvass.

When he peered up at Castiel again, he found an expression that was downright indulgent.

“What?” Sam asked.

Castiel looked down at the book. He had a grin smothered in one corner of his mouth.

“Would you like water?” Castiel asked, blatantly changing the subject. “Or food?”

“Water sounds amazing,” Sam confessed after a beat.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Castiel set his book aside and eased from the bed. “I’m not supposed to let you out of my sight.”

Sam lifted his head slightly. “Says who?”

“Your brother.”

“Figures,” Sam snorted.

By the time Castiel returned, Sam had meandered into a thin doze. He could only partially appreciate the tiny cup fashioned from aluminum foil that Castiel presented him. Everything still ached to some degree, and Sam had half a mind to ask Cas to pulverize a Tylenol and let Sam see what happened with a pinch of the powder.

But Sam’s better sense argued against it, so he set the aluminum foil cup aside and, after another assurance to Castiel that he wasn’t very hungry, he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to drift off again.

He succeeded, but only partially. He never quite fell asleep, because the blanket was scratchy and too stiff and the dishtowel mattress was thin. And though Castiel moved slowly, Sam still heard every shuffle he made.

But Sam was also tired and aching, so he rhythmically slipped into that place where time moved in diagonals and all his senses became dulled and thick.

Sam returned to consciousness for the fifth or sixth time when he heard voices.

“—got him some water about three hours ago but he said he didn’t want to eat.”

“Yeah. Right, okay.” A shift of boots against concrete. “How’s the reading?”

“Inconclusive. Spell work is a wide field.”

“You’re telling me. Some of the curses I’ve been reading about. Yeesh. Sammy’s probably kinda lucky he didn’t find a…give-you-two-heads powder.”

“Probably,” Castiel agreed. They both fell silent, and Sam got the prickling feeling that they were both looking at him. He wondered what he looked like, beaten up and buried under a scrap of fabric and a handful of inches tall. Pathetic, his brain supplied. He groaned slightly.

“Sam?” Something warm coalesced nearby. Sam peeled open his eyes and squinted at Dean’s nose. He could make out Castiel somewhere beyond as a shadowy behemoth.

“Woke me up,” he muttered.

“Sorry kid,” Dean’s eyes were narrowed. “You look really pale.”

“Might be,” Sam hedged.

“Let me…” one of Dean’s fingers came up and pressed against Sam’s forehead (or to be honest, across the upper half of Sam’s face, but he understood what Dean was going for).

“You feel really clammy,” Dean said. “Cas, does he feel clammy?”

Castiel had his _really?_ face on when he copied Dean’s actions. He then frowned.

“A bit,” he admitted.

“Dean,” Sam struggled to a sit, because he could practically see Dean’s gears whirring. “I’m fine. Jesus Christ, I’m not even warm.”

“So you’re cold?” Dean demanded. “You’re cold and sweating? Are you sick? Cas, did you let him get sick?”

Sam buried his face in his hands.

***

Sam was not sick.

Dean didn’t believe him, but Sam told him exactly where he could stick his mother henning opinion.

“Rude,” Dean muttered. Sam was sitting cross-legged on the kitchen counter watching his brother throw together dinner. That was Castiel’s doing, because the man was a veritable genius when it came to Dean-wrangling.

“If you’re so worried then be useful and go make something Sam can eat,” Castiel had said. “Soup would probably be best. We have a few cans left in the cabinet.”

“Dude, no,” Dean had scowled. “That’s all chunky and shit. It needs to be pureed.”

“Hm,” Castiel had hummed placidly.

“Better to make it from scratch,” Dean continued.

Castiel had nodded, all solemnity.

Cue Dean chopping onion like it had committed a personal atrocity against him.

Sam had agreed to go with Dean into the kitchen to let Castiel join Kevin in research. Mainly because he didn’t think he was going to get back asleep anyhow, but also because Dean was still twitchily looking at him like he expected Sam to faint away. That combined with the fact that Dean had barely cracked any short jokes made Sam downright worried about the guy.

Dean had ensconced Sam in a corner far away from any hot stovetops or coffee machines. He’d rustled up a few more dishtowels so Sam didn’t have to sit on hard countertop, and Sam now had one of the oldest, softest dishtowels wrapped around his shoulders. It was marginally better than the scrap of flannel. The simmering pot of soup filled the kitchen with a chicken-smelling heat, and that eased the lingering aches.

Sam had his head leaned up against the wall when Dean’s voice drifted from the pantry.

“We use up those potatoes?” he called out.

“Um,” Sam lifted his head. “I don’t think so. You look in the white wire container?”

“Got ‘em,” Dean announced. Sam tilted his head against the wall again.

Sam watched through low-lidded eyes as Dean washed, peeled and diced potatoes on the opposite side of the kitchen. Dean had foregone his usual blaring cooking music, but he still muttered songs under his breath that drifted to Sam in snatches.

“You want carrot in there?” Dean asked once the potatoes had disappeared into the oversized pot.

“Sure.”

“’Course you do,” Dean rolled his eyes as he opened the refrigerator. “Wanna throw in that…what is this? The leafy stuff?”

“The arugula?”

“That.”

“That’s for salads, Dean.”

“So are carrots,” Dean said flippantly. Sam’s chest jumped with a small laugh.

“Guys!” Kevin’s voice carried from somewhere deep in the bunker. Dean closed the fridge, the bag of carrots hanging loose in his hand. Sam straightened right as Kevin clattered into the room with a loose sheaf of papers in his hands.

“I got it!” Kevin’s face looked about ready to split. “In that one scroll you told me was probably useless, _Dean_. Hah.”

“What scroll?” Sam asked, right as Dean said, “What does it say?”

“An Arabic copy of a text that was Sumerian in origin,” Castiel answered Sam as he trailed Kevin into the kitchen. “Dean was intimidated by the script.”

“Hardeehar,” Dean scowled. “C’mon Kev, cough it up.”

“Okay so,” Kevin spread his papers on the countertop in front of Sam, and Sam went to a stand so he could peer at the notes. “The spell these witches were using was a derivative of an enchantment that dates back to 4000 B.C.” Kevin glanced up at Sam. “All things considered, you really did luck out. You got the most vanilla of shrinking spells. Some of them got nasty.”

“Small blessings,” Sam bobbed his head.

“So that means we have a counter spell?” Dean asked.

“It means we have a counter spell,” Kevin agreed. He pointed at his notes. “Got the instructions here. The usual wacky ingredients, but it’s possible to do.”

“Do we have the ingredients in the bunker?” Sam asked.

“Some,” Castiel said. “But most of them are old and probably have lost some potency. Better to have fresh ingredients.” He looked over to Dean. “This will be a time to call in a few favors.”

“We can do that,” Dean nodded vigorously. “We can definitely do that.”

“So this means I get out of dish duty this week?” Kevin asked, his eyes brighter than Sam had seen them for months.

“Dude, you get out of dish duty for a freaking _month_ ,” Dean promised.

***

Several hours later, after pureed chicken soup, Sam sat on the table while Kevin, Dean and Castiel made calls around the hunter network. Within a few hours, they had packages of refrigerated nixie spittle and bottles of squid ink due to be shipped to the post box they kept in town. Dean had argued for hopping into the Impala and making a cross-country road trip out of it, but Castiel and Sam convinced him that it would take at least as much time as waiting for the deliveries.

“I’d rather stay put than travel,” Sam said. “Probably less dangerous.”

“Probably,” Dean allowed, and let the subject drop.

The big clock struck nine, and Kevin announced that he was ready to turn his brain off for the night.

“Could watch something. Cas still hasn’t seen _Gladiator_ ,” Dean offered mildly, because whether or not he admitted it, Sam _knew_ his brother had a mental list of movies for Castiel to watch, and was chugging through it with determination, if not subtlety.

But an air of lightheartedness hung over the four of them, so no one had any real objections to watching Russell Crowe swing a sword around.

“Is it about Roman gladiators?” Castiel asked Sam in a low voice while they waited for Dean to bring the popcorn. Kevin was fiddling with the DVD player, because it was still a little tricky to get it hooked up to the projector.

Castiel sat on his end of the couch, Sam and his dishcloth blanket curled up in his cupped hands.

“Yeah,” Sam replied, craning his neck to see Castiel. “You’ll have to tell us how accurate it is.”

“Oh my god Sam, it’s not supposed to be accurate,” Dean said as he entered the room with beer and a big bowl of popcorn. “It’s _Hollywood_.”

“I’m just curious,” Sam countered.

“I am too,” Kevin called out from the DVD player.

“Living with a bunch of nerds,” Dean muttered, and landed next to Castiel. Kevin climbed in beside Dean and nabbed a handful of popcorn as the opening credits appeared on the screen.

After some experimentation, Sam let Castiel leave him on the couch arm. It was wide enough to sprawl out on, and it afforded him a good view of the screen. Of course, the screen was so huge at this size that everything had a distorted look to it. And even though Dean had turned the sound down, the noise still thundered through Sam like he was sitting in the front row of an IMAX theater.

But Sam also had a few kernels of popcorn to nibble on, and a definite plan for getting back to his own size, and Castiel’s steady hand a few inches away. So if eardrum-rattling battle sounds were the worst of his problems, he’d take it gladly.

As promised, Castiel kept up a steady commentary of the movie’s version of the Roman Empire. Dean told him to shush at the good parts and Kevin ignored Dean to ask Castiel questions. Sam provided his own share of conversation near the beginning, but about a fourth of the way through the movie, he started growing quieter. He was more content to lie on his belly and pay half attention to the screen. Castiel, Dean and Kevin turned into comforting rumbles, like the dredges of a really satisfying thunderstorm.

And then, oddly enough, Sam realized that one minute he’d been watching Maximus walk through his field of wheat, and the next, the screen was rolling its ending credits.

Sam was also not on the couch arm anymore, but the folded dishcloth that he’d been sitting on in the kitchen. Something broad and warm was running down his back. Its gentle pressure tapered off at the small of his back, then started again at his head.

Kevin stood silhouetted against the screen, and he was announcing that he was hitting the sack. Dean moved into Sam’s vision with empty beer bottles in one hand and the popcorn bowl in the other.

“Should I wake him?” Castiel’s voice came from every direction. The pressure slid down between Sam’s shoulder blades again.

“Rather not,” Dean disappeared from view. “Rather he sleep as much as he can.”

Sam shifted his head and realized, belatedly, that he was sprawled on Castiel’s thigh. He sluggishly tilted his head up and found blue eyes gazing down at him.

The pressure disappeared.

“You fell asleep,” Castiel offered. And somehow, that felt like the only explanation Sam needed. He let his head slump down and released a long, rattling sigh.

The smoothing pressure reappeared.

Sam only stirred again when he felt himself lifted into the air a few minutes later. There was some jostling, and then Dean’s scent surrounded Sam. Dean said something to Castiel, Castiel replied. Then a slow bobbing—Sam could almost imagine that he was on a ship—followed by a settling onto something soft.

Sam blinked his eyes open to the sight of Dean perched on the edge of his bed, back bowed, elbows on his knees and his hands clasped over his mouth. He might have been praying, if he weren’t staring at Sam so intently.

“Hey,” Sam said.

“Hey.” Dean straightened. “You okay?”

“Can’t seem to stay awake.”

“Can’t blame you,” Dean rubbed at the back of his neck.

Sam hummed.

“It’ll be fine you know,” he spoke to the creases in Dean’s forehead. “I’ll be myself within a week.”

“Lot can go wrong in a week.”

“We’ll all be careful.”

“Coulda killed you today.”

Sam rolled in his lips briefly.

“You didn’t,” he finally said. “You know I just said that ‘cause I was having a moment, right?”

“Didn’t make you wrong,” Dean leaned forward. “Just…don’t try anything this week, okay?”

“Yeah,” Sam murmured. “Okay.”

“Promise me.”

“Pinky swear, cross my heart, ad infinitum,“ Sam yawned. “Go to sleep.”

“Yeah whatever. You’re not the boss of me, short stuff,” Dean eased to a stand.

Ah. There it was. Sam’s mouth crooked into a grin.

Even though his eyes were closed by the time Dean had changed into his pajama pants, Sam still all but felt his brother pause at the bedside table on which Sam lay. One calloused, familiar thumb brushed at Sam’s hair. Butterfly light. Like it was afraid to touch.

A second later, the lights went out with a gentle _snick_.


End file.
